Osceola County landfill takes in coal ash from Puerto Rico, triggering public backlash

Osceola County leaders sought Monday to ease public outcry over landfill disposal of thousands of tons of ash from a Puerto Rican power plant that burns coal.

The county approved a contract earlier this year, charging the privately owned JED Landfill $2 for each ton of ash it receives. A unit of Waste Connections, the landfill is southeast of St. Cloud in rural area.

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Commissioner Fred Hawkins sought to deflect speculation that he backed the deal because he worked as a waste manager at the landfill years before it was bought by the current owner.

“There are a lot of untruths out there,” Hawkins said of social-media comments. “I look at the facts and if the facts don’t match up to people’s narratives, I can’t apologize for that.”

JED representatives who spoke to reporters also stressed that the 15-year-old facility is of a modern design approved for ash. They described efforts to test ash for hazardous ingredients, to prevent dust from escaping and to capture water leaching through the landfill.

“My concern is hurricane season,” said Douglas Lowe, a resident of the Harmony community east of St. Cloud and about 10 miles north of the J.E.D. Landfill. “I'm afraid if we have another hurricane hit Central Florida we would have this ash disperse across the local area. Harmony and Holopaw would be in the direct impact zone.”

“Landfills are necessary evils,” Lowe said. “I don’t think adding other people’s toxic waste to our state is in any of our best interests.”

The ash is coming from the AES power plant near Guayama, Puerto Rico. The company has struggled with water pollution issues from its coal ash in Puerto Rico and in the Dominican Republic.

Three shipments of a combined 100,000 tons of coal ash have arrived at Port Manatee in Tampa Bay. The waste material was then trucked to the landfill. Osceola’s contract with JED Landfill expires at the end of the year.

The opposition to Osceola County receiving coal ash underscores the increasingly contentious challenge of disposing of the byproduct that contains a wide variety of metals and chemicals.

In 2001, officials at the Environmental Protection Agency sought to label coal ash as a “contingent” hazardous waste, meaning the agency would deem properly managed ash dumps as nonhazardous, and improperly stored ash as hazardous.

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That proposal was abandoned but coal-ash incidents, including the breaching of reservoirs containing a liquid form of ash, brought the federal government to tighten coal-ash rules in 2015.

JED officials said that the Osceola landfill complies with those more stringent rules. The ash is in a dry form but to hold down dust is moistened at the start of shipment in Puerto Rico and again before it arrives by truck in Osceola County.

By comparison, the Orlando Utilities Commission landfill for coal ash in east Orange County has been documented by the state as having polluted ground water and accused in a lawsuit of allowing toxic dust to escape into communities.

The original portion of that ash landfill, which adjoins OUC’s power plants that burn coal, is primitive compared with the JED Landfill, which uses plastic liners to prevent leaks.

“It was a need that Puerto Rico had and it was a need we are able to fill,” Grieb said. “I do not feel it poses a risk to Osceola County residents because it is in a proper landfill situation.”

Lisa Evans, a Massachusetts attorney specializing in hazardous waste for the environmental group Earthjustice, said Puerto Ricans are endangered by the coal ash that has polluted water and has been a source of contaminated dust.

The ash pile there is 90 feet tall and sits in the path of hurricanes, she said.

“The answer is burial in a secure landfill that meets federal standards,” Evans said. “In the end, that is the best solution.”

But, Evans said, general-use landfills like that in Osceola are not as well equipped for the material as landfills designed only for ash.

“One has to treat this waste very carefully,” Evans said. “I’m not saying this particular landfill is the wrong place for it, but I am concerned that close enough attention won’t be paid to the nature of the waste and the harm it can cause.”

Luis Martinez, a senior lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Puerto Rico has long struggled with its solid-waste problems and that shipping coal ash to Florida appears to a responsible option.

“Moving it is not easy and the folks near the Osceola landfill probably prefer that there was such a facility in Puerto Rico,” Martinez said. “But obviously that doesn ‘t exist. The right place to put in our opinion is in a lined landfill.